Hi it's Tod at Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today we're going to
have a look around this mid-sixteenth century, mid to late 16th century
sporting crossbow. This is drawing around 550 600 pounds in draw weight so it
gives quite a kick, you might not think crossbows do but in fact they do. So
because of that it's now looking at the new technologies of guns really in a way
so we're beginning to get sort of more of a familiar looking gun stock so that
it's not so painful on the shoulder. Again you might think that guns
would put crossbows out of use for hunting but they were fashionable really
for hunting through until about 1750. But this sports the relatively new and
exciting feature of a bolt clip. Because what this allows you to do, is if you are
in the woods a little bit, or riding or indeed if in earlier days if you
had been pointing downwards with your crossbow and wanted to shoot down, you
have to put your thumb on the back of the bolt here to hold it into position.
This allows that all to change, but what it also allows you to do, is to shoot
longer bolts so like this one here, which now sticks well out at the front of the
bow and you see that in the manuscript pictures a lot. Now that's fine if you've
got your thumb on it but for a gentleman you know that's no good at all so the bolt clip
allows you to do that automatically really. Then we've got nice leather
bindings at the front here, bit of decoration bit of hemp binding here, dyed
nice bright orange red. And some scrimshaw work, again which has got a
little bit of paint work on it just to lift it up and give it a bit more.
Now the cranequin itself is an open work cranequin. Cranequins were
invented 15th century, I think early 15th century from memory, but they really
only began to get into popular use towards the end of the 15th but now into
the 16th they've become sort of art forms in their own right, open work, this
is a very simple one really. But completely open work
encasement here so that you can see what's going on inside, you can see as
you turn it what the gears are up to, and again they often have inlaid panels and
just works of art in their own right really. But you need this heavy
compound gearbox mechanism to draw the bows back, because you know, it's 600 pounds;
this is quite a weight. They went up to 1200, 1500 maybe even 2,000 pounds. If you
look at the thickness of the bows on them they were vast the drawl weights of
these hunting bows. So you need powerful and complicated bits of winch
equipment to get them back. Now this one here, it's a bit of a handful to deal
with, but basically you sit it onto the back of the bow here pulls on so it now
is resting on these two lugs at the back the two steel lugs. Now it goes onto
the string here and it sets the two claws onto the string. The bolt
clip here, you want this out of the way, they're quite delicate you often often
see them broken off in museums. It's just a standard thing that happens. Now
another thing to note very quickly is if you look at the string here going over
the stock. It rubs quite heavily on the top of the stock. I used to think that
was a badly made bow, but actually because of the the force lines, the way
the cranequin works it tends to lift the string off the
stock of the bow as you're drawing it back and to counter that you have to
have the bow pushing the string quite heavily down onto the stock. It means it's
actually a pretty inefficient way of drawing it, it's it loses about eight to
ten percent of its power or impact energy rather, on the bolt. So it's not
something you want to do if you can avoid it but on a cranequin bow you
do need to cant the string quite heavily pushing down onto the stock.
The bolt clip was a revolutionary invention, a very small thing, but
actually it transforms the way you can use the bow and it allows you to shoot
longer, more accurate, more stable, cheaper to make bolts, than was previously the
case. you know it's easier done. You can shoot, I've got one here,
shorter bolts, these are basically exactly the same bolt but one is 50 mm/
two inches shorter than the other. I need the shorter one for a different bow it's
not for this bow. I need the shorter one for a bit different bow but it's not the
choice that I would make if I had to that choice, so it shoots and it shoots
okay, but I must say and you can see the way it flies is just on the edge of
being unstable. So you could not, I could not go ten mm/
half an inch shorter than this, it would not shoot so this is the absolute limit
for this particular setup. I'll just show you the procedure for shooting the bow
now so the first thing you do is set the bolt clip to one side, set the nut into
the position there so that the string will engage it and rotate it around.
The cranequin hooks on the back and now you hold it into position for the first
couple of winds, just so you can get a bit of tension onto the string now, make
sure everything's central. Keep the butt of the bow into the joint between your
body and your thigh, keep your fingers off the top there, you just crank it
around. It's a bit of a faff, I can't say I'm a great fan of cranequins and
the trigger is now engaged. Back it off a little bit and then I'm just popping
the end of the bow here onto this chair because the ground is a bit wet.
Bolt into the groove and now the bolt clip is engaged and then just shoot it
as you would any other bow. So straight in the centre. The next thing I need to
do now is completely unwind the cranequin, the sort of person who owned
this bow would have handed the cranequin to his servant who would now
prepare it ready for the next shot and to be honest probably would have loaded the
bow for him and handed it to him loaded. I'm short on servants. Thank you very much